Vietnam War Collection: books plus

[Ken White]

Ken, I misunderstood your comments.

Thus my ""then they terrorized the Malays and the Chinese civilians not playing CT"" use of the word 'terrorized' with tongue in cheek [ ;^) ] should have had that tongue in cheek symbol to show it was intentional overstatement; your use of 'control' is correct, of course.

My wife keeps telling me to stop trying to be a comedian...

[Bill Moore]

My wife tells me I have no sense of humor, so I probably missed your point, though I usually enjoy and catch on to dark humor

[bourbon]

Vietnam Histories

This release consists of six declassified histories volumes and describes the CIA's role in Indochina during the Vietnam War. These histories written by Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., are based on extensive research in CIA records and on oral history interviews of participants. The release totals some 1,600 pages and represents the largest amount of Vietnam-era CIA documents yet declassified.

Document List

CIA and the Generals (13.2 MB PDF)
Covert Support to Military Government in South Vietnam

CIA and the House of Ngo (13.1 MB PDF)
Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954-63

CIA and Rural Pacification (71.3 MB PDF)

Good Questions, Wrong Answers (2.7 MB PDF)
CIA's Estimates of Arms Traffic through Sihanoukville, Cambodia, During the Vietnam War.

The Way We Do Things (7.1 MB PDF)
Black Entry Operations into Northern Vietnam

Undercover Armies (29.2 MB PDF)
CIA and Surrogate Warfare in Laos

[jmm99]

for those interested in Vietnam. The only "but" is that the DL is over 130 MB - so broadband is needed. My plan is to burn a CD here and take it home where I am limited to dial-up. Will be interesting to compare these with the Pentagon Papers.

[Steve Blair]

Looks interesting. I haven't looked through all of them yet, but there have been the usual "excisions" in sections of the text. These range from single words to entire paragraphs.

[Mike in Hilo]

Thanks for posting. So far, I was able to peruse the piece on Pacification. To be sure, this was an interesting read for me.....although, frankly, I found it unimpressive insofaras I didn't learn any new information or see conclusions that deviated from the arguably superficial ones offered by popular journalism.
Anyway, I would be hard put to consider any CIA document on pacification that relegated the enemy's Shadow Supply System to one line anything but a disappointment. (Perhaps this topic, which was highly sensitive at the time, remains classified. In fact, this assumption has constrained me from offering more than similar, minimalist one-liners about this successful enemy enterprise that helped to convince me that Phoenix was more of a failure than a success. ...Those in present company with the necessary clearances who are interested might try key words Shadow Supply System MR-III, 1970-73. )

Edit: A bit more, although still terse, on the Shadow Supply System on page 111 of the piece on CIA and the Generals, which I have begun reading.

Cheers,
Mike.

[jmm99]

Lots of scanned documents (unclassified) are out there.

E.g., MACV Command History 1972-1973, whose Table of Contents is here. Brief discussion of "shadow supply system" starts at A-41, p.18 of .pdf, in this part of the MACV history.

Explanation of Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive is here.

For a different slant on the "VC villagers" - and a couple of articles on "in country logistics" and "import-export", see an article collection by Jacques Leslie, which has a number of articles from the 1972-1973 period:

"Communist Cadres Use Nightly Persuasion: Told to Hamper Truce, Viet Villagers Say"
November 21, 1972. [JMM footnote *]

«The following stories from Vietnam won A Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award, an Overseas Press Club citation, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for foreign correspondence.»

"'We Are Friends,' Viet Cong Tell Visiting U.S. Newsman"
February 1, 1973.
An account of the first visit by an American correspondent into Viet Cong territory in South Vietnam.

"Binh Phu: A Lesson in How Viet Cong Village Operates"
February 2, 1973.
Analysis based on my trip to Viet Cong territory.

"In Viet Cong Country, Villagers Are the Key"
February 4, 1973.
More reflections on the Viet Cong visit.
.....
"U.S. Advisers Tell of Viet Corruption"
April 23, 1973.
This story and the next two were based on documents surreptitiously taken out of the United States embassy in Saigon.

"Both Sides Found Committing Major Viet Truce Violations: Although White House Depicts Reds as Main Transgressor, U.S. Embassy Documents Present Far Less Clear-Cut View"
May 26, 1973

"Troop Corruption Seen Alienating S. Viet Populace"
May 27, 1973. [JMM: brief mention of "shadow supply"]

"Vietnam Generals Suspected in Brass Smuggling Scandal"
June 20, 1973.
I became curious when I read that the Japanese manager of Mitsubishi's Saigon branch had been imprisoned without explanation. This story was the main factor in my expulsion from South Vietnam a month after it appeared

.

--------------------
[*] from last paragraph of this article:

The informants said that when villagers asked why there was no cease-fire Oct. 31, cadres told them, “The deceitful Americans have tried to delay the agreement, but they cannot betray the peace-loving people of the United States and Vietnam. This plot of the American leaders will be crushed soon, because if there is no cease-fire, we will go on fighting, and 17 million people in South Vietnam cannot defeat 19 million in North Vietnam and 800 million in China.”

The view of this VC guy is well kept in mind in assessing the line-up in this armed conflict.

[Mike in Hilo]

Appreciate the links--Thanks,


Regarding "the line-up in this armed conflict," one might add that the cadre did not need to point out the obvious, which was that in Oct 72, the top player, the US military, had all but departed, and total abandonment was widely anticipated.

Cheers,
Mike.

[jmm99]

at Texas Tech (declass. 19 May 1983) - 9 pages - Shadow Supply System.[*]

And, another piece from another journalist in 1971.

NIE 53/14.3-73 Estimate of Vietnam Short-Term Prospects, October, 1973 (20 pages) (FOIA declss.) - accurate prediction of NVA offensive in 1974-1975 (page 20).

Another dozen or so hits turn up for "shadow supply" in TTU Archives.

----------------------------------------
[*] E.g., Lenin's "All in a Week's Work" in SE Asian terms. We will rob the capitalist's bank on Mon. He will collect from his insurance company on Tues. We will use the bank money to buy arms from the capitalist on Weds. We will have our revolution on Thurs. We will take the capitalist's money on Fri. We will execute the capitalist on Sat. We will rest on Sun.

If you search for this among Lenin's works, you won't find it - cuz I just authored it. He did say something similar, but where I forget.

[jmm99]

Among the many papers at CSI, Harold Ford's "Why CIA Analysts Were So Doubtful About Vietnam" is a must read - no doubt, it will generate some opinions contrary to his.

His background on things Indochinese was long. His thesis is summed as follows:

Why CIA Analysts Were So Doubtful About Vietnam
Unpopular Pessimism
Harold P. Ford (1)

(1) Editor's Note: The author of this study drafted his first National Intelligence Estimate on Indochina in 1952, and subsequently had Vietnam-related duties as staff chief of CIA's Office of National Estimates and as a CIA representative to certain interagency working bodies. Since retiring from CIA in 1986, when he was Acting Chairman of CIA's National Intelligence Council, he has prepared classified studies on Vietnam for CIA's History Staff.
.....
Areas of Doubt

These, then, were the principal areas of doubt that for years lay behind so many CIA analyses of the outlook in Vietnam. Except for those occasions where Agency officers produced flawed accounts or rosied up their judgments to meet pressures from above, the areas of doubt translated into the following fairly stark messages to successive policymakers:

1. Do not underestimate the enemy's strength, ruthlessness, nationalist appeal, and pervasive undercover assets throughout South Vietnam.

2. Do not underestimate the enemy's resilience and staying power. He is in for the long run and is confident that US morale will give way before his will. He will keep coming despite huge casualties. If we escalate, he will too.

3. Do not overestimate the degree to which airpower will disrupt North Vietnam's support of the VC or will cause Hanoi to back off from such support.

4. Do not overestimate the military and political potential of our South Vietnamese ally/creation.

5. The war is essentially a political war that cannot be won by military means alone. It will have to be won largely by the South Vietnamese in the villages of South Vietnam.

6. The war is essentially a civil war, run from Hanoi, not a Communist bloc plot to test the will of America to support its allies.

7. Winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese is a tough task. Most Vietnamese simply want to be left alone, and most do not identify with Saigon. And many are either too attracted to the VC or too afraid to volunteer much information about the VC presence in their midst.

Ford outlines one of several fundamental dichotomies in 1963-1964 between the CIA analytic view and the policy makers - the domino theory.

As to the policy makers, he sums their view:

[NSC Action Memorandum 288, 17 March 1964]: We seek an independent non-Communist South Vietnam. . . . Unless we can achieve this objective in South Vietnam, almost all Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance . . . accommodate to Communism so as to remove effective US and anti-Communist influence . . . or fall under the domination of forces not now explicitly Communist but likely then to become so . . . . Even the Philippines would become shaky, and the threat to India on the west, Australia and New Zealand to the south, and Taiwan, Korea, and Japan to the north and east would be greatly increased.(33)

(33) As quoted in The Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam/New York Times, ed., 1971), pp. 283, 285. That portion of NSC 288 repeated, verbatim, a text which Secretary of Defense McNamara had written the day before. McNamara, Memorandum to the President, 16 March 1964. FRUS, 1964-68, Vietnam, Vol. I, p. 154.

On the other hand, the CIA analysts had this to say:

[ONE Memorandum for the Director, June 1964]: We do not believe that the loss of South Vietnam and Laos would be followed by the rapid, successive communization of the other states of the Far East. . . . With the possible exception of Cambodia, it is likely that no nation in the area would quickly succumb to Communism as a result of the fall of Laos and South Vietnam. Furthermore, a continuation of the spread of Communism in the area would not be inexorable, and any spread which did occur would take time--time in which the total situation might change in any of a number of ways unfavorable to the Communist cause. . . . [Moreover] the extent to which individual countries would move away from the US towards the Communists would be significantly affected by the substance and manner of US policy in the area following the loss of Laos and South Vietnam.(34)

(34) As quoted in FRUS, 1964-68, Vol. I, p. 485.

My own perception is that the NSC view was too pessimisic - and the ONE view too optimistic - for the timeframe of 1963-1964. After a passage of four years to 1967-1968, events had modified the picture for SE Asia as a whole:

1. The Sino-Soviet split (which Ford discusses)

2. The sea change in Indonesia from 1965 caused by the abortive Com revolt and subsequent eradication of the party apparatus there (which Ford does not discuss).

3. Confirmation of stabilization in Thailand, Malaya and the Philippines (also not discussed by Ford).

So, by 1967-1968, in the view of some, South Vietnam had become expendible - measured in the larger context of SE Asia. What received the larger media and scholarly attention, however, was the "anti-war" reaction in 1968-1969 and thereafter. All of that is beyond the intended scope of Ford's brief article.

To the extent that Vietnam is suggested as a template (usually in the negative sense) for present-day efforts at counter-insurgency, one must recognize that Vietnam was very complex, not only internally, but also with respect to regional geopolitics. My perception is that it is not a very good template (positive or negative) for anything other than itself. Others differ.

[jmm99]

An Assessment (and short history) of the RD/Pacification Program, 5 Jun 1967, is here.

The GVN also published its own reports on RD/Pacification. A large collection is found here (along with some other scanned docs).

For example, Brigadier General Tran Dinh Tho, author of "The Cambodian Incursion", Washington DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979, earlier (1977) wrote "Pacification", which can be downloaded in its entirety here.

Tran Dinh Tho, Pacification (1977)
1 Introduction (443 KB pdf)
2 Pacification Strategy and Objectives (761 KB pdf)
3 Operation and Support (1086 KB pdf)
4 RVN-US Cooperation and Coordination in Pacification (441 KB pdf)
5 Pacification Techniques and Operations (661 KB pdf)
6 Social Reform and Economic Development (711 KB pdf)
7 The GVN Political, Information and Chieu Hoi Efforts (849 KB pdf)
8 An Assessment of Pacification: Some Achievements, Difficulties, and Shortcomings (740 KB pdf)
9 Observations and Conclusions (427 KB pdf)
Appendices (727 KB pdf)
Decree ¡V Military Organization of the National Territory
Decree ¡V Reorganization of Village and Hamlet Administration

Download entire document (7 MB pdf right mouse click)

A sample chapter (ch 8) is here.

[Sigaba]

With this sort of clear-eyed history, how could Moyar have failed to gain tenure?

IMO, what has failed Moyar thus far is his approach to historiography and his professionalism in general.

Above all else, he wants to be right and everyone who disagrees with him to know that they are wrong. One is not going to succeed with that type of approach in a profession dominated by academics who came of age protesting that war. (Especially when one is reliant upon another person's foreign language skills.)

[PeterJensen]

At the home page of the U.S. Department of State is it possible to browse through the Foreign Relations of the United States series and find plenty of documents from the administration of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon concerning the war in Vietnam.

You can visit the Foreign Relations of the United States at:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/index.htm

A real gold mine for people with historical interests

[pjmunson]

See the National Security Archives at GWU for a treasure trove of declassified documents on Vietnam and other issues. Some of these are original top secret memos declassified and scanned in as PDFs. Great stuff. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

[Old Eagle]

I'll send a link on Mon

[PeterJensen]

Well, I'm amazed! Thank you for the link. A very interesting collection of documents at the National Security Archives. Do you know other on-line collections of documents concerning counterinsurgency in American history in the 20'th century?
Thanks in advance.

[Steve Blair]

Texas Tech's collection is certainly first-rate. You can also find after-action reports and the like scattered throughout this collection.

[PeterJensen]

Thanks :-)

[Old Eagle]

faster through Google, but here's the link I promised

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/

[PeterJensen]

Has anybody heard of the new book "A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq" by Mark Moyar? And does anyone know which approaches Moyar uses in his new book? And how he regards counterinsurgency through the period?

Thanks in advance.